It comes to sight, through a belt of shadowy light, a trashy and fraudulent (politically motivated) newspaper headline:

Found on the internet:

"Zizek is an actual philosopher. Peterson is a hack. Marx (above) is the father of my imagination."

I recast this, the correction being made: Zizek is a flashy intellectual. Peterson may be a philosopher. Marx was the first grand ideologist.

Why? Because in antiquity all philosophy (however: this means, sophistry, megerintism, and other things, as well as the winning, relativising (through the uttermost dominating of the human depths, by manfully setting the rudder and "rutter") Plato and Aristotle essentially concerned live public concerns lived in public. Catholicism and, a fortiori, European science, was not there to offer a ready-made metaphysics, so even the most abstruse searchings after hidden things, appealing to the human essence, and as such demanded by man as man (that is to say, in the interpretation: the human being). Human beings must, through their nature, if I may, have some answers to the question of what the whole or all things is. Today, in greatly transformed cosmopolitan circumstances, all discussion is rapid, formed by large city short-talk, by the need for sudden speech. Peterson is the first to enter this utterly strange world space with sudden force. Ergo, the preservation of the traditional core of the philosopher, in the contemporary, is not impossible.

Peterson moves in the living discussion, and superlatively owns his own positions. His formula is equal to the ad hominem in the Socratic sense: "don't say things that make you weak". Ergo, say things that are in the core of your being, rather than putting, merely on the lips, "arguments". Strength of mind not yet clarified, perhaps a mediocrity, but, maybe not. One who has done some thinking, and may have the ability to think. Basically unpolitical, though buttered at every point by the press as a right-wing hack piece of steaming toast as though he were a "party man".

Zizek: A scholar and brilliant intellectual tactician who reads German philosophers of the short period of the German spring into the strange light of time, and writes innumerable entertaining books and articles. A professor of philosophy, ergo, one who does not deserve, and lacks the philosophic sense, to be a philosopher. Largely the product of the Soviet machine, essentially weak minded; comedianism appealing to the ravenous maw of the multitude of hungry academic superficiality and politics. At least as anti-philosophic as the clan of sophists and the megarantists.

According to wiki, Peterson is definitely not an academic philosopher.I believe Peterson do get engage in philosophy in general but of what genre, we will need a definition to such type of philosophy.

Slavoj Žižek (/ˈslɑːvɔɪ ˈʒiːʒɛk/ (About this soundlisten) SLAH-voy ZHEE-zhek; Slovene: [ˈslaʋɔj ˈʒiʒɛk]; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher. He is a professor at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London.[3] -wiki

Zizek is obviously an academic philosopher.

I believe we need to establish a universal definition for 'what is philosophy' that is acceptable to all.

I am a progressive human being, a World Citizen, NOT-a-theist and not religious.

Serendipper wrote:Peterson is actually a good philosopher, he just hasn't let go of god and objectivism yet, but he's performed brilliantly at finding novel ways to substantiate the absurd.

I like Peterson's attitude to discussions. He wants to take risks and not just make points. And you can see sometimes, he's raw. He is not finding life a picnic and telling us how to make it one. There are few men who can manage to do that without playing victim. I find it hard to believe they will actually debate. I assume they will sit down and blab. IPeterson doesn't strike me as a philospher - not because he's not an academic one, which I don't care about, but because he's a psychologist. One could be both, but he seems much more the latter. I really liked In Defense of Lost Causes, by Zizek. I am not remotely Marxist or Communist, but I liked the process of seeing what can be valued in actions/processes/groups/leaders that are (seemingly) simply evil. I think it is a useful process,though it didn't lead me to the political opinions he is heading for, I found it useful internally. I don't see Zizek as a clown. I am not sure he actually produces things that work in the way he wants, but I think the processes in them are potentially useful, despite coming from Marx and Lacan.

They're both psychologists, clinical and academic respectively, and their subjects of interest spill over to philosophy - perhaps you could say pragmatically and theoretically respectively.

I was thinking the other day how they do have common ground on the subject of, what Zizek would call ideology, and Peterson would call stories - and this is an important subject, because it is at the core of all the political tension we're seeing today.

I also casually entertained a kind of ranking of contemporary thinkers/youtube personalities - I'm sure there will be disagreement but I'm happy with it:At the bottom you have ideologues like Stephan Molyneux, obvious trash.Up from there you have competent thinkers, I thought of the not so famous guy from his channel Rationality Rules, I think his name is Simon Woodford. He's got a solid grasp, still learning, not yet original but we'll see - there's probably other examples you could fit into this category.Then you have the advanced thinkers, which I think Jordan Peterson classifies as. He's thinking outside the box, has some original insights and is worth listening to when speaking about a number of subjects, but obviously not all.I find Sam Harris classes as a master thinker - he appears to have considered pretty much everything that you find him talking about, and argues for his case pretty much flawlessly. He's even pushing contemporary thought into the future.Zizek, I'm sure plenty will disagree, I class as a genius thinker. He consistently delivers material that turns on its head even advanced thinking. He's one of the extremely small number of people who brings up perspectives and arguments that I hadn't even thought of.

Whilst Sam demolished Peterson in debate, I think Zizek will just exchange extended monologues with him.

Also, thank you Guide for delivering a cogently written post - if you have before I've missed it, but I appreciate your dispensing of the flowery nonsense on this occasion, I hope you keep it up.

Peterson is the punchingbag touring youtube apparently for the purpose of losing debate after debate, but what's remarkable is his ability to keep finding new ways to defend what he should otherwise know by now is wrong. As soon as you think you have him down, he finds another angle. I applaud the creativity and ingenuity.

An amateur psychologist? Sure - pretty much everyone. I mean in their professional capacities and in their primary areas of interest and proven expertise.

Serendipper wrote:Peterson is the punchingbag touring youtube apparently for the purpose of losing debate after debate, but what's remarkable is his ability to keep finding new ways to defend what he should otherwise know by now is wrong. As soon as you think you have him down, he finds another angle. I applaud the creativity and ingenuity.

I'm not so sure he's finding another angle, he's just changing the subject. He's a big fan of analogy "it's like...", and whenever you try and pin him down he'll go off on a tangent to his initial analogy because he feels like what he's trying to explain "it's complicated, man, it's really complicated". All he's really doing is exposing his lack of ability to condense his understanding, often an indication that it isn't a sufficient understanding - which is good in a way. He openly acknowledges that he's debating at the edge of his understanding, and has no fear in presenting it. More people should do this when they are at the edge of their understanding, rather than insisting that they aren't and trying to hide it to save face. The problem is that it's not the edge of understanding for someone like Sam Harris, or even that Dillahunty guy, for whom I previously lacked respect due to the capacity in which I was made aware of him (his debate performance was clearer in orders of magnitude than the mess of his show where he's dealing with obvious morons). He actually might throw my ranking into question, because I would class him as another competent and not advanced, yet he was still able to crush Peterson's "advanced" thinking. I guess my categories aren't mutually exclusive and overlap somewhat.

Zizek will also turn to analogy, particularly in the form of his jokes, which I love, but they are all convergent, not divergent. I've racked up literally hundreds of hours listening to each of them... how sad haha.

Silhouette wrote:I'm not so sure he's finding another angle, he's just changing the subject. He's a big fan of analogy "it's like...", and whenever you try and pin him down he'll go off on a tangent to his initial analogy because he feels like what he's trying to explain "it's complicated, man, it's really complicated". All he's really doing is exposing his lack of ability to condense his understanding, often an indication that it isn't a sufficient understanding - which is good in a way. He openly acknowledges that he's debating at the edge of his understanding, and has no fear in presenting it. More people should do this when they are at the edge of their understanding, rather than insisting that they aren't and trying to hide it to save face. The problem is that it's not the edge of understanding for someone like Sam Harris, or even that Dillahunty guy, for whom I previously lacked respect due to the capacity in which I was made aware of him (his debate performance was clearer in orders of magnitude than the mess of his show where he's dealing with obvious morons). He actually might throw my ranking into question, because I would class him as another competent and not advanced, yet he was still able to crush Peterson's "advanced" thinking. I guess my categories aren't mutually exclusive and overlap somewhat.

Zizek will also turn to analogy, particularly in the form of his jokes, which I love, but they are all convergent, not divergent. I've racked up literally hundreds of hours listening to each of them... how sad haha.

Oh man, Dillahunty is definitely genius-level.

FWD to 36:00 (or backup a couple minutes for context)

"And as to whether or not we can know anything, the only demonstration that I can give is that I wrote this rebuttal ahead of time." [Audience laughs] A mic-drop moment.

You're right about Peterson: he's lack-luster, and if I never hear him again, that's perfectly fine.

Serendipper wrote:"And as to whether or not we can know anything, the only demonstration that I can give is that I wrote this rebuttal ahead of time." [Audience laughs] A mic-drop moment.

Woah.

That IS a good one...

Serendipper wrote:You're right about Peterson: he's lack-luster, and if I never hear him again, that's perfectly fine.

I wouldn't say lack-luster as straight-up as you have - I think he has value, but I too will be perfectly fine if I never hear from him again.

Serendipper wrote:I'm not aware of that Zizek fella. Perhaps I should be?

I'm half surprised, yet half not. He's a prominent leftist, but hails from the EU and probably falls short of the American standards for superficial aesthetics (and media bias).

By that, I mean if you can get past what I might naively suggest is a speech impediment, it might just be his Slovene accent, his ticks, sweatiness - his ideosyncracies in general - the guy is more than worth your time if you can keep up with the erratic (but as I said, convergent) structure of his points. There's plenty of material out there - mostly commentary on contemporary issues drawing primarily from Lacan, Hegel and Marx.

Serendipper wrote:I'm not aware of that Zizek fella. Perhaps I should be?

I'm half surprised, yet half not. He's a prominent leftist, but hails from the EU and probably falls short of the American standards for superficial aesthetics (and media bias).

By that, I mean if you can get past what I might naively suggest is a speech impediment, it might just be his Slovene accent, his ticks, sweatiness - his ideosyncracies in general - the guy is more than worth your time if you can keep up with the erratic (but as I said, convergent) structure of his points. There's plenty of material out there - mostly commentary on contemporary issues drawing primarily from Lacan, Hegel and Marx.

I still can't believe Chomsky flew under my radar for so long. I checked out Zizek briefly and I can get past his idiosyncrasies just fine. Thanks for the tip. If there is anyone else or anything else you'd suspect my being interested in, feel free to pass it along.

you've only just now discovered zizek, serendipper? he's like a rock star, comedian, narcissist ("i am a monster, i claim"), philosophical virtuoso and master psychoanalyst of capitalist/consumerist culture rolled into one, dude... how could you have missed him? watch this one (the whole series if you can).

More of Zizek's hideous, though charismatic, clowneries, in the most substantive and repulsive form, discrediting him and showing him to be a weak mind, shows in his recent talk of "pseudo science". The man has no judgment concerning European science, is a basket case, living in a hamper, a kind of rat biting a hole in the wicker of a Soviet materialist Marxist ideological black out, peeking an ugly lascivious snout out for a sniff of sham fresh air (while continuing to bandy about Soviet bosh which he never got loose of due to having a weak mind). And what he refers to as "pseudo-science", whatever that may mean, is a comparison concerning the way hormones function in different strata of animal life. A perfectly sensible subject matter. Zizek, a clever mind who appeals to those without the ability to think: infinite bluff of an academic theorist.

Supplement:

Sam Harris, a bore shock jock who appeals to illiterate persons of no culture, but who has the equipage of the strong self-reserved confidence of a magician. Wholly ignorant of Western thought and its history in any serious sense. Absurdly whimpered that he knew Richard Rorty as though that excused his lack of a serious knowledge of Pragmatism (and, as though Rorty, one among the many, were the very epitomized core of this American thinking). Idiotic American bloc demagogic appeal to the state educated multitude in its most elementary nakedness. Not so fraudulent, nor as wholly unable to think, as booboise beloved scientism posterboy Dawkins.

"... dispensing of the flowery nonsense on this occasion, I hope you keep it up."

You have learned the simpleton patois of scientism, the wretched vox populi. Now, you must learn one day, that this kind of childishness is only good for mechanical dealings. For humans can't be treated as cannon balls. It harms reasoning to forbid its power scope. Then, the result is, that one becomes dependent on rules, fallacies and various prosthetic means of "thinking" and "judging", which more order one than serve the mind. However, beside from the current age, and its problems, due to the race of lethal missiles ahead of the power to think, which you must study decades to grasp, what I would recommend is that you read a decent piece of literature. Plato, a magnificent stylist, will help whet your apatite for the joy derived from the wink of language. Poor denizen of Galilean decay!

guide wrote:More of Zizek's hideous, though charismatic, clowneries, in the most substantive and repulsive form, discrediting him and showing him to be a weak mind, shows in his recent talk of "pseudo science". The man has no judgment concerning European science, is a basket case, living in a hamper, a kind of rat biting a hole in the wicker of a Soviet materialist Marxist ideological black out, peeking an ugly lascivious snout out for a sniff of sham fresh air (while continuing to bandy about Soviet bosh which he never got loose of due to having a weak mind). And what he refers to as "pseudo-science", whatever that may mean, is a comparison concerning the way hormones function in different strata of animal life. A perfectly sensible subject matter. Zizek, a clever mind who appeals to those without the ability to think: infinite bluff of an academic theorist.

Guide wrote:You have learned the simpleton patois of scientism, the wretched vox populi. Now, you must learn one day, that this kind of childishness is only good for mechanical dealings. For humans can't be treated as cannon balls. It harms reasoning to forbid its power scope. Then, the result is, that one becomes dependent on rules, fallacies and various prosthetic means of "thinking" and "judging", which more order one than serve the mind. However, beside from the current age, and its problems, due to the race of lethal missiles ahead of the power to think, which you must study decades to grasp, what I would recommend is that you read a decent piece of literature. Plato, a magnificent stylist, will help whet your apatite for the joy derived from the wink of language. Poor denizen of Galilean decay!

What do you think logic is for?Do you really think that certain people can only think from one logical proposition to the next? In reality pretty much everyone thinks without restraint, myself included, only if they wish to communicate their thoughts meaningfully they can either systematise what they've thought, after they've thought it, into a form that others can make sense of, or they can just throw out raw thoughts through whatever means. The latter can be artistic expression, it can rely on the interpretation of others, it can be nonsense. By all means indulge in the latter, but if you go by the former you can construct ideas that actually make reliable sense of our senses - even formulate cogent argument and predict things with more than random success. The Apollonian versus the Dionysian, if you like. Perhaps you are a die-hard devotee of the latter - there is nothing inherently wrong with embracing nonsense and irrationality. Art has value, no question, but it does not have the same value as rational analysis and accurate, reliable communication.

This is what logic is for, and if you wish to explore the details on a precise, communicable level to build something that lasts independently of the expression of the day and contemporary tastes, perhaps some Galilean decay would do you good! The reality is that you rely on whatever you might call the sensible, rational, logical form of thinking in your everyday social life - assuming you have one and aren't completely dependent on others to interact for you. Maybe you're still a child? Which everyone was once. In as far as anyone is embedded in the real world, and with the capacity to create beyond the transitory, they will learn to formulate their thought, however previously unshackled it was, into something that is not fallacious.

As such, on a forum of communication that values the wisdom not only in the arts but also the sciences, your excuse from logical consistency is denied.

Likely, it ('s reason debtre) is because the sophists wanted to play a game with the Megarians et others. And, then, later, the Christians. Ergo, they needed “rules”.

“In reality pretty much everyone thinks without restraint, myself included, only if they wish to communicate their thoughts meaningfully they can either systematise what they've thought,”

Exacto! Genauification. Now your simplicity is not in a herd of lies, but sensibly betraying itself to our naked consideration of you foul unworthiness!

“raw thoughts through whatever means.”

However, what if others, too, had the same crude thoughts? Ergo, were “human” upon the same mistake. Why expand the hoop of the beings with direct “given” (es gibt) “thereness”? why not, instead, drill into truth!

“ construct ideas that actually make reliable sense of our senses

”

I would name these concepts, not ideas. This is a cruel trick on a man such as Plato, who despised idiot concepts. Ideas, that is, direct knowledge of being as it is, the only authority, being for the anthropos, or hominem (human). If, many words, than, concepts. Abstraction. After two thousand years, “ideal types”.

“The Apollonian versus the Dionysian,”

However, at bottom, this means solopsism as “life” (ergo, anti-Descartesianismaficationelifaction, el sid), that is, total identification with everyone and everything, and form. Ergo, being and beings.

“embracing nonsense and irrationality”

This is derivative, if I may say so without offending you to your being, of rationality as some value. I.e, I think ratio as the source of the answer to: How to live?, or, How to carry out predictive vert-frei science, or, &c., then, find some “romantic” departure from that project.

Art has value, no question, but it does not have the same value as rational analysis and accurate, reliable communication.

This misses the point outright, e.g., the destruction of science! Of the tradition, in the attempt to make politics formulaic, Hobbesian. this attempt failed. The result is still with us, your education, namely, all you know, as did the Maoist or Stalinist child, is a thing to be overcome. This is very hard to achieve.

Not at all about "art". Art and techne are the same thing historically. Science was degraded, became, mere art. Mere technology.

“Art”, as art for art sake, or as economics + poltics = “art world” may be “neutral”, e.g., something one scarcely cares about. That is self-evident, many don’t give a damn about present day “art”. Art, in the traditional sense, you don’t understand this, means, something learned, ergo = LEARNABLE, rather than nature. REASON was understood as an art in the middle ages (cf. recta ratio, right reason [concerning the law of a country]).

“This is what logic is for”

Child {you must see = you honestly are very poorly informed, one studies these matters for decades]. “Logic” has many meanings. The most recent has to do with “symbolic logic”, e.g., mere “rules” = “math”. You are naked unaware of the history of thought = WHAT THOUGTHIS WHAT YOU ARE!. If you are not infinitely rude I can show you, but I am not your nurse to waste time constantly on unnecessary polemics.

“logical consistency”

This is a notion of math as a concept. As in Stephen Wolfram.

Now, I’ve studied all this much more thoroughly than you. This means: I am not your fucking nurse. If you don’t believe it I don’t care. Get lost then if you want to “debate”. I am of AT LEAST sound mental capacity, likely much higher, so that means, whatever you think is certainly wrong, because you have less data to work with. You are a baby in thought. The gods have forgoten to sing over your cradle, and so, your language is dumbness and American bloc music.

A sufficiently obscured argument, such that nobody can quite understand, can never be faulted, eh?You can always pull the "you're too dumb to understand" card this way.Seems pretty cowardly, no wonder you have such a high opinion of yourself, all protected in your self-made bubble.I bet you don't even dare be understood else we all realise how full of shit you really are.

But this way, you can claim mental capacity to whatever degree you like without ever actually having to say anything at all or even know what you're talking about!

Either you are choosing the most autistic standard of self-evaluation possible, or you are a sophist.

I'll be generous and go with the latter for now, and you can continue to go ahead and tell yourself how brilliant you are, "if only others were smart enough to understand" what you've intentionally prevented them from understanding.

Or have I been too rude for you to be willing to stoop down and nurse anyone or anything now, "Soliphist"? I'd be so sad if I had

I can't edit one of my previous posts anymore - the Rationality Rules guy is Stephen Woodford, not Simon.

I guess his channel title suggests he's just another rule-follower with his dumb, childlike, perfectly comprehensible rationality. If only he would reel off impenetrable nonsense claiming to be profound - then he would be as advanced as "Guide".

Aquinas and the medievals thought ratio, reason, was the essence of the human being, and that through it human beings could come to the mind of god. And therein might achieve rational life, a measured goodness, as an ordering of our will to action. But, what is the excuse for fetishizing rationality today when nobody believes that? Reason exists, it's a tool for making instruments and for manipulating our fellows, this is the real accepted belief. The rest is a fetishism of impotent private "subjective" convictions. Who cares what conclusions reason comes to? It's not a serious thing to make these kind of analyses, it's a babyish game which may, here and there, be sincerely believed in as are shallow thoughtless political views, and it relies on all sorts of vacant and busted assumptions. It's a thing for burial. This kind of modern and passing conceptions such as "objective existence" taken as the word of a revilation for all practical purposes. All the arguments of people like this are based essentially on "autistic" presuppositions of this sort. It's a kind of demagoguery founded in what we've picked up in school, through the state compulsory education which is based on the best professors could do fifty years ago, or whenever the concepts came to power. It's not a worthy pursuit for a serious person, self respecting, who would attempt to learn the scrutinizing of reality. It's an aping of a received wisdom. It is a belief, demanded by the prevailing tradition. It is closer, therby, to what was fought against, by the thinkers who polemized against institutional religion (that is when it was still a real power, e.g., the Kulturkampf, one of its final victories before its down going in the essential respect, long after it had been for three centuries weeded out of the educated classes ever since Hobbes' work in 1650), its dogmas, than to thought or philosophy in any serious sense.

We have here a comprehensive problem, a global difficulty. The circumstance isn't that individual students are not intelligent, or even that "analytic philosophy" is mere "problem solving", but, rather, the whole approach in the countries dominated by capitalism, in the Western bloc, which is increasingly planetary, is simply "autistic" ("continental philosophy" just as much) or unserious, the training is personal and petty, the proffesorite is generally incompetent to teach philosophy in any serious sense, they don't know what it is. I remind you of the infinitely trenchant remark of Hannah Ardent (circa 1950, in paraphrase): the American hasn't an inkling of what philosophy is (the German of what politics is). what is sought is the technological essence, in the service of economy through concerning its military needs, achievable through a certain form of education. There is a race to power which can not be stopped, since each country must be able to hold its own in the world or become a servant. The global university, its elite schools in America and the UK, is not concerned with philosophy/wisdom as philosophy, but with philosophy as a petty individual academic concern subordinate to what we have long called science, the Galilean science, now planetary. It presupposes the authority of this European science, the part of philosophy now in power. It presupposes the general existential nihilism of the each one has the right to interpret existence in their own way. It has no, can produce in its product, young consumers and programmers, no serious grasp of its place in the history of thought, and how it is floating about on uninterrupted presuppositions of a radical and comprehensive character which are the intransigent support of it spontaneous ends.

So reason is an outdated practice, founded in ideas that no longer hold.

It merely lets us build things and persuade those under its spell.

I remember rebelling against reason myself a few years ago for a long time, and people here would ridicule me, but irrationality is a perfectly choosable choice - and I still don't deny that now. You claim superiority through looking past the methods you were taught at school, well you're not the only one who did that.

Your reasoning here is that, given reasons such as you present, one would do better to abandon reason - and this is the exact reason why I found such reasoning to be invalid: it is in itself reasoning. How can you argue against reason while at the same time appealing to it? You can say anything you like, even in the most abstruse syntax and semantics, but as soon as it makes sense you validate reason. You appeal "to the rules".But hey, you're arguing against reason, so even though you're appealing to reason, you can deny that you are and not be in violation of being free from reason because there are no rules. You can say whatever you want, whatever comes to mind, whatever you think - fuck reason, you're free from that. However, the effectiveness of this relies on others similarly rejecting reason such that they either agree with you because of whatever comes to their mind, or they don't. It's a gamble - there's no reason to agree or disagree with you, it's all cathartic expression. You win as much as you lose and nothing is built any more than it is destroyed - you're just you and that's that.

Like I said, it's a perfectly choosable choice.

But what else does reason accomplish? Consider the illusions of simply taking things at face value - as you do when you pay no regard to "the rules" of reasoning. They will fail you. Reason will navigate you around them, predictive power goes through the roof and you will overpower all the free spirits who are so superior such as yourself. These mere instruments that you bring up are the same that you use to communicate with us here, they run the daily things that you take for granted, they found all the systems and work methods that found the running of the daily life of yourself and the entire society in which you live. They allowed electricity, mechanical utility, sewage systems, running water - how pathetic and outdated reason is!